The Whitewater Common Council met in regular session on Tuesday, October 15th.
The meeting agenda is available online.
Coffee. It’s not a bad idea to have coffee sessions with law enforcement (8:00 on the video), but it’s worth noting – because it’s true – that community policing depends on positive, routine contact between officers and residents in unstaged settings. This positive, routine contact requires that residents know officers’ names, etc. Single public-relations efforts are of lesser value than steady and respectful encounters during a daily patrol. (Simply driving about, or viewing the city behind sunglasses, doesn’t amount to a positive encounter with residents.)
More generally, public relations efforts in a city as diverse as ours are often failures – they reach only one part of the city (sometimes a part that erroneously thinks it’s the whole city).
Ordinary Public Works Requests. If every concern of the city involved an ordinary public works request (16:55 on the video), then the city would have no concerns.
Phosphorus Management. A sound plan for phosphorus management is vital for the health of the city’s residents. The recommendation before the council (22:50 on the video) on 10.15 was for Strand Associates, one of the lower bidders. They’ve done sound work for the city in the past (indeed more so than other vendors the city’s engaged over the years).
As always, embedded above, the best record is a recording.